In an industrial printing environment, numerous printers are typically configured to simultaneously print information on various types of items or articles. One example of an industrial printing environment may be the printing of labels on various types of packages or consumer goods. Consumer goods require a great deal of product identification, such as, for example, expiry dates, traceability data, etc. The information to be printed may vary from one item to another, from one batch of similar items or articles to another, from one site or time of manufacture to another, and from one type of print technology to another. This printing information may be provided to the printers in the form of printing instructions, which may comprise printer ready bitmap images or coding instructions wherein information to be printed is determined by the printer itself.
Today, the speed of the printing operations, especially for consumer goods, drives the need for real time industrial printing or coding possibilities. This need is currently met by printing systems being configured to “push” print data information to the printers whilst the production line is running. However, this may result in complications regarding the speed and synchronicity of the printing system, printers and the production line.
For example, often a host or printing application must poll the printer and apply heuristics to deduce whether the print data information was received and applied on time by the printer. This feedback information may be critical when, for example, printing a competition code. This is because it is important to be able to show that the winning competition code only has been applied once during the whole printing operation.